First, an overview of an experiment I just completed concerning moving video to computer: First I tried it my standard way and ran the video output from a video camera into the video input of a combination VCR/monitor and video taped a couple of minutes of test footage. I then played the video tape video signal into an Analog to Digital converter and captured the video signal on my iMac using iMovie. I was then able to edit the video and export the results in various formats that could be posted to the web or emailed. That done I then ran the same camera's video into a DVR and out to a monitor (as you probably know, in both cases the monitor was in the system so I could see to focus the camera and view what was being recorded). I then put a DVD-R disk into the recorder and recorded a few minutes of test footage. Next I removed the disk from the DVR and inserted it into the iMac and used a free program called HandBrake to convert from DVD format to MP4. Once that was done I imported the file to iMovie and, as before, was able to edit and export the results in various computer formats. In the end the results of both methods looked pretty much the same. So here's where I seek your opinions. Both techniques required manually converting the recorded signal into a format the computer could recognize. That being the case, is there any advantage to recording on a DVD as opposed to video tape (ignoring the facts that DVRs cost more than VCRs and that video tape is probably on its way out)? Thanks for your thoughts, Patrick